The Green Ones

Episode 2, Part 4

I shimmy my arms through the sleeves of a plain white tzotzomatli and smooth its front. It’ll need some tailoring to bring out my hips—the only way to keep me from looking like a tree trunk draped in a sack. But that’ll have to wait.

Surprised by my own emotion, I force back tears while holding my dirty tzotzomatli out for examination. It’s not like I could wear it at the academy. And maybe that’s the thing. Whatever happens, the next four days will change my and Olin’s lives forever.

I fold the garment carefully. I’ll leave it with the shopkeeper, a quality seamstress and faithful client. She can find another home for it—an uninfected girl, a mere carrier of the twitch virus, who can spend her long years raising children and being a wife.

Outside my changing room, Olin barks a warning followed by the clatter of an overturned clothing rack.

An instant later, a bullish chadzitzin rips through the curtain, pushing me into the corner. I lunge for his throat with two fingers.

Lightning quick, he clenches my hand. Bending it back, he demonstrates the ability to snap my wrist before letting it go. Shirtless and dripping with sweat, he hesitates. As Olin rushes up behind him, he raises his hands and backs away. “Neca says to tell you, if you ever wanna visit your garden again, you’ll do exactly what I say.”

I open my mouth to argue.

Olin shakes his head. “It’s Huatiani. He’s onto us.”

The chadzitzin nods, grinding a strip of tzapotl bark in his teeth. “You drew his attention with your stunt at the entrance to the underground. Now he’s had time to surround the place.”

“And you are?”

“Yetic.”

I nod. It takes only a moment to place the name—another well-known psych-fighter. “Well, listen here, Yetic, I don’t take orders from you or Neca, so—”

“Neca also says to tell you, if you want your brother to survive until registration, shut up and run.” Grabbing Olin with one hand and me with the other, he thrusts us out of the dressing room and toward the back of the shop. “The JP’s man guarding the meat market won a lot of money off my last match.”

In a blur, we reach the interior corridor connecting the shops. Yetic sprints to our right. “He let me in. Hopefully he’ll let us out.”

“And why are you helping us?” I don’t like trusting sweaty strangers.

“Neca promised me something I’ve wanted for a long time.” He bursts through the back door to the meat market. “Don’t you worry, Bluehair. There’s no way this side of the underworld I’m not fulfilling my end of the deal.”

The three of us duck behind a counter where a worried butcher does his best to ignore our presence. Brandishing a cleaver, he hacks apart the rib cage of what looks to be a coyotl. I note to avoid his store in the future, then remember I won’t be back. “And what deal is that?”

“Deliver you and your brother safely to the agreed location.” Yetic strips the last of the gummy resin from the piece of tzapotl bark with his teeth before tossing the woody portion. He stares at me while chewing the remaining gum.

I grip Olin’s hand. “And where—”

“Now,” Yetic rushes around the end of the counter.

I’ve no choice but to follow, Olin in tow. We sprint past the open front of the shop and onto the walkway. A man with a stun stick faces us. When he spots Yetic, he nods and looks the other direction. Slapping the pavement with our bare feet, we dart away from the underground’s central entrance—away from Neca. I want to go back, but I keep running. As we sprint down an alley, a hover sled loaded with blockades slides to a stop behind us, removing all possibility.